Sustainability and the drive to net zero are being discussed across almost all industries and sectors and are particularly relevant within the technology space. Dhru Patel leads on sustainable architecture at Principle One, having recently completed a Masters Degree in Sustainability from Cranfield University.
Having spent almost 20 years in the software engineering industry, Dhru had always been conscious of the connections between technology and the environment. Focusing on the topic of “greener use of the cloud” for his dissertation provided an opportunity to improve his understanding of the sustainability challenges around cloud and some practical insights on how engineers can set up projects from the outset to use cloud resources in a sustainable way.
Cloud usage has grown at a remarkable pace over the last decade, but despite offering what’s often seen as an easy solution to data storage and processing, the environmental impact cannot be ignored as it has led to increased energy use, water consumption and waste. Data from the Green Software Foundation estimates the cloud now accounts for more carbon than the commercial aviation industry. Furthermore, a journal by Nature in 2018 outlined projections that predicted the cloud will consume as much as a fifth of the total global electricity supply by 2030, and that’s without accounting for the growth we can expect to see with AI. Also, looking beyond just energy and carbon, there are some estimates that suggest a typical data centre in the US consumes as much water as three hospitals or 100,000 homes, whilst the WHO have stated that e-waste including the mass of servers being cycled through in the cloud now accounts for the fastest growing solid waste form, having an impact both on land and in our seas and oceans. It is therefore imperative that we look at what we can do to make the right architecture and design decisions around the sustainable use of cloud.
Cloud first – but will it be sustainable?
Many public sector organisations have now moved to a “Cloud first” policy when embarking on new development as well as considering how to migrate legacy systems onto an affordable, supportable platform. However, sustainability benefits rarely form part of the business case and as such are seldom considered in the design phase. So what are the challenges?
Research completed within Dhru’s dissertation suggests that firstly, there is a lack of awareness around the sustainability impacts of cloud solutions, both among senior stakeholders and in those responsible for the design and development of the system. Furthermore, sustainability has not yet been turned into a standard consideration that is factored in when defining the objectives of a new system or platform investment. In addition, there are misconceptions around sustainability requirements leading to additional costs in development, when often the opposite is the case, which can lead to a reluctance to give sustainability the focus it should merit. The research also concluded that end users had little to no idea of the environmental impact that the systems they use in their everyday lives. For example, recent studies have shown that every ChatGPT query consumes the equivalent of 500ml of water, which given the 1.6 billion visits it had in December 2024 alone rapidly adds up, and is a trend that is only growing.
So what needs to change?
As a starting point, having a strong set of non-functional requirements around sustainability defined can provide the framework that design teams need to put in place a structured approach to both incorporating sustainability into system requirements as well as measuring and evaluating system sustainability over time. Moreover, before cloud computing, engineers were constrained by physical constraints around managing system performance and data volumes. While designing in the cloud may suggest these limits no longer exist, designing without these constraints has both financial and sustainability consequences if completely forgotten.
The research also highlights that it can be hard for organisations to access the relevant sustainability data to compare on-premise data centres and cloud solutions. Generally the sustainability messaging from the major cloud providers is very positive, demonstrating that they are rising to the challenge, especially when it comes to renewable energy and carbon. However there is definitely room for improvement for other sustainability considerations such as water consumption and stress, waste management and social impacts such as the impact of putting the large data centres in or near a town or city.
Taking this into consideration is even more important in cloud migration projects and establishing a baseline before migration that will enable the benefits of new ways of working to be understood. Many organisations have in fact experienced higher costs, energy consumption, and reduced sustainability after migrating legacy systems to the cloud using a "lift and shift" approach rather than designing to build on the benefits of new ways of working.
Driving change – the key personas behind Cloud computing
As part of his dissertation, Dhru interviewed a range of colleagues within Principle One to understand their perspectives on the cloud and the sustainability considerations that surround it. This helped to frame recommendations by examining how different stakeholders could include sustainability into their decision-making and day to day behaviours with regards to IT investment, system development and end usage. The study identified three personas that epitomised different types of engagement and behaviour:
The first was that of an Activist Leader, someone who both understands sustainability and technology well enough to inform policy and ensures effective sustainability governance is in place for the IT estate.
The second persona identified was that of a Passive Consumer, characterised by a typical end user who stores and backs up data in the cloud without fully understanding its impact or ways to reduce it, instead assuming that these key decisions are outside their control and being made by others.
Finally, the research identified the Pessimistic Developer who believes that effective engineering and design can make a big difference and deliver more sustainable cloud based systems, however business decision makers wouldn’t prioritise that work over feature development and other work which has a more tangible business benefit.
Regardless of persona, there are some simple changes to how we work today that we can put in place to incorporate sustainable thinking throughout the development lifecycle from project initiation through ongoing sustainment and through to decommissioning.
In addition to the project-based view, it is possible to consider sustainability from an organisational perspective, such that central organisational goals cascade through to all levels of an organisation from top level strategy right through to business-as-usual processes and continuous improvement initiatives to deliver a tangible change, especially with regards to net zero targets.
Place sustainability at the heart of business strategy and business processes
Embedding sustainability into an organisation’s strategy demonstrates that it’s considered a priority not just for systems but across all functions. Currently, sustainability is often an afterthought and seen as a lower priority compared to strategic areas such as accessibility, supportability and security, which often have working groups to provide central guidance and support from the outset of organisations and their programmes. By shifting the approach of sustainability to always be considered from the outset, this would allow it to be embedded within the objectives set by the organisation and programmes they are working on, ensuring that sustainability would become part of business as usual.
Define requirements for improved sustainability
Once the strategy is set, establishing a set of non-functional requirements that support the sustainability objectives that will be incorporated into each new technology delivery project is the next step. These should include both the energy saving objectives but also the tools to support carbon footprint monitoring and logic to enable efficient use of resources. These requirements can then be used to manage trade-offs against other non-functional requirements, such as performance and availability, taking their wider impact into account, for instance, considering what the impact of 24/7 availability has on greener goals. These requirements can also support decision making processes such as which technologies to use, as that can have a massive impact. One such example is in coding languages, where Python has been demonstrated as being 76 times more energy intensive than C, when performing a like-for-like operation, but despite this Python is still the most widely used language worldwide.
Declutter your IT applications portfolio
One of the steps that we often take at home to become more sustainable is decluttering. Over time, organisations build up many applications, often providing overlapping functionality and legacy system decommissioning can be overlooked at the end of a new project implementation. Decluttering and taking advantage of opportunities to rationalise can not only benefit sustainability but also improve supportability and reduce costs.
Optimising the platforms being used and supporting facilities
As part of an organisation’s ongoing IT management strategy, a regular assessment of the various systems in use can identify opportunities to cut costs and improve sustainability by harnessing the various cloud models (PaaS, IaaS and SaaS), ensuring that resources are used only when needed and often delivered in a more efficient way. In addition to this, considerations can be made at the lower level where specific processes can be optimised in terms of both geography and time to make the most use of renewable energy, as well as simply scheduling specific systems such as non-production development and test environments to shut down when not in use. Lastly, CI/CD engineering patterns can be used to drastically reduce the number of non-production environments needed for a project and as such can help to reduce costs as well as improving sustainability in the long run.
In the flurry of news articles and documentaries being served to us on a near daily basis, it is hard not to get pulled into thinking that the planet is in crisis mode and that the cloud is one of the reasons why. With the cloud’s ever increasing consumption of energy, materials and water, the challenge is undeniably immense and as such it is more important than ever that we recognise that sustainable IT is a shared responsibility that we can all play a part in.
As systems engineering has evolved as a discipline, we, as systems engineers, have begun to give more and more consideration of the wider factors and impacts of system delivery. Just as it would be unthinkable today not to consider a broad range of non-functional requirements such as accessibility or performance, we have to consider sustainability as a critical factor when we consider addressing customer requirements and meeting the IT needs of the organisation.
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